Having spent myself for the sake of my mission, the Holy Spirit illuminated my mind to consider predestination and the plan of God that he has within himself and which he wishes to show a lowly sinner such as myself.

My mind stretches towards the infinite when I consider that God knows all things and all things are present to him. I realize that my movement from the world of the particulars to the realm of the forms, the metaphysical journey by which I come to be a partaker of the divine, is a participation in God’s way of knowing.

Likewise, I consider the nature of predestination, and I place my trust in his word that “all things work to the good for those who believe.”

But yet I perceive on the horizon a yet more wondrous possibility. I realize that it is impossible for a man to live in this world as if all has been decided, and in the case of immature minds, such a proposition leads to folly rather than wisdom. However, I believe that in reflecting on these things, my thoughts approach a yet greater horizon where I can learn a new kind of repose for my weary mind.

This teaching lies on the threshold of a surrender. This thought lies on the threshold of a yet more radical and complete death, a spiritual death, a mystical death. If I accept that God has already determined the manner of my death and has set in motion a plan for my glory, such a thought when internalized leads me past the threshold of this world and I touch his Divinity.

In a manner akin to the Eucharist, I perceive only my free will and my humanity on the surface, but by an act of radical faith such knowledge leads me beyond what my senses and my mind perceives his plan. In the Eucharist, the senses perceive bread and wine, but faith teaches that Christ is present. So the world of my senses will never fully be freed of the perception and limitation of my free will while I am in this world, but by faith, I see God’s grace and his activity guiding all things.

But how can such knowledge be integrated into my every day life? In a certain sense, it cannot be. To enter into my daily routines and the work of the apostolate, by necessity my mind must turn from such heights and return to the world as if all things depend upon my action. God has so designed this world that even the contemplative must return from the heights of contemplation and clean his living space and brush his teeth and care for his body and for others.

While we are in this world, we are never free from the necessity to see all things as if they are dependent on our action. It is a mystery that God chains us to this world of the senses, but in this too is great wisdom and his plan of salvation.

The wise man does not spin his wheels on abstract considerations which frustrate the grace of contemplation, but when he enters into prayer, he learns the art of surrender and spiritual death. Such is the only meditation worthy of attention, the meditation which leads us beyond ourselves in perfect self-forgetting.